


There And Back Again

by Razzaroo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 22:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12095166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: ' “Well,” she says, speaking to the flowers and to the sky and to Tamlen, wherever he may be now, “I’m here.” She watches a songbird cross the sky, breathes in slowly and feels the whole world anew, “I’m back.” ' Deryn Mahariel has left her clan.





	There And Back Again

Deryn Mahariel has left her clan.

Deryn Mahariel has left her clan and she can’t go back and she’s not sure if they’d even want her back; they said they would but she knows that now she stinks of taint and strangeness and monsters that sleep in the secret places below the earth. Despite what they say, she knows her arrows and her bow won’t be enough to make their welcome feel less strained.

( _And it’s fine, really; a hunter has no better friends than bow and arrow, though her heart pangs for people like her, for people who shared her childhood and her history and her stories.)_

She sits in the camp, which reminds her of home but is so so different, and she can smell herself, smell the taint and blood and dirt and numerous other vile things. She hates it and Alistair smells the same way and it’s the only thing she hates about him.

It’s for this that she has her little indulgence: a bottle of lavender oil, crystal glass, purchased in Denerim’s market because it’s so girlish and sweet and delightful and everything she ever dreamed of as a child, sitting in Ashalle’s lap and listening to stories of Arlathan’s fine ladies with all their indulgences long lost to her people.

She strips out of her armour, all harsh unforgiving leather, and sheds her shirt and trousers, kicks them aside so she’s only in her thin underclothes. She removes the stopper from the bottle, as delicately as she would pluck petals from a daisy, and tips some of the oil onto her fingers, dabbing it into the hollow of her throat, along the line of her collarbone, in the crooks of her elbows.

( _And this, she thinks, is something Tamlen would tease her for. Preening, songbird, he’d say. Preening. Like some shem noble.)_

“You smell nice,” Alistair says when he enters the tent, dropping his sword beside his bedroll, “Like a whole field of lavender. The Dog will think he can roll in you.”

His face scrunches when he realises how that sounds and Deryn smiles, offers the bottle.

“Do you want some?” she says, “Sure smell like you need it.”

“Mm, think I might borrow some of yours.”

He buries his face in her neck and she wraps her arms around him, nimble fingers working at the buckles of his armour because the edge of it digs into her through the thin cotton of her shirt and the best romance stories don’t include bruises and pinches and chafing.

( _And this, maybe probably, is another reason the clan would be hesitant to take her back. Because they’d like Alistair and they’d be happy for her but he is still shemlen, even though Deryn has spent nights tracing the slight point to his ears, lost herself in the firelight gleam of his eyes.)_

 

* * *

 

She keeps the flowers Alistair gives her. She bundles them and loops them onto her back, threading them in buckles and buttonholes and tying some in a collar around The Dog’s neck. When they camp, she strings them from the tent poles, tying them with knots Ashalle had taught her when she was knee high.

“Are you going to keep them all?” Leliana asks her, her head brushing against a bunch of dried stitchwort.

“Probably. They’re nice gifts.” Deryn sniffs and she smells faint perfume, “Once, when the clan went close to the coast, Tamlen brought me an entire armful of shells and driftwood he’d found on the beach. Ashalle used it all to decorate our aravel and it’s all still there now.” She scratches the back of her head, “I like little things like that. Better than grand gestures.”

Leliana twists some dried bluebells between her fingers, “My mother used to keep flowers.”

“Really? Maybe Alistair will find some of those. You can have those ones.”

“You don’t even know what kind they are.”

“But you do,” Deryn says. She lies on her bedroll, because she is bone tired and Leliana’s company is easy, “You can tell me. And you can have them.”

And she means it, because it’s so important to have memoirs of a mother, to have something of hers to hold on to. It’s why Deryn still wears the charm Ashalle had made for her the day she received her vallaslin, hanging on a long strip of leather, tucked close to her heart.

 

* * *

 

Her ankle twists on the way up to Orzammar and Alistair carries her the rest of the way on his back, both of their packs carried by the Sten to lighten the load. He grumbles but accepts them because the alternative is Deryn on _his_ back, legs around _his_ waist, stories and songs in _his_ ear.

Deryn clings tightly to Alistair’s back on the approach to the dwarven city, that secret space beneath a mountain, and presses kisses to his neck, sings about sweet nightingales and banks of primroses and the valleys below.

“Do you have any other songs?” Alistair asks, “Or is this one just your favourite?”

“I know one about lavender and kings,” Deryn says, “But I think it’s a children’s song.”

“So long as it contains no mention of nightingales or primroses. Don’t want to lose Sten over the mountain edge.”

 

* * *

 

“You don’t mind it, do you?” Alistair says one night when it is just him and her and the smell of lavender, “My being Maric’s son, I mean.”

“It’s not like you can help it,” Deryn says, “So why would I?”

“Arl Eamon might want me on the throne.”

“When you’re king, I shall be queen.”

Alistair laughs then, “He won’t like that.”

“If Arl Eamon liked to let you sleep with the dogs, I don’t give two nugs about what he likes.” Deryn frowned, “Then again, I suppose he thinks I’m a step _down_ from the dogs.”

“You smell much better.”

Deryn says nothing. She only hooks one leg around his waist and pulls herself in close to him, plastering herself against his side, a vine of ivy around an oak. Beneath her hand, his heartbeat is a steady thing, more solid than stone and it’s the earth she will plant her roots in, the sunlight she will nourish herself on.

 

* * *

 

Leliana spreads Deryn’s hair across her back and shoulders, long and black and thick, wet and tangled. She doesn’t tug and she doesn’t pull; every knot and tangle she encounters is eased out slowly, removed with gentle hands. She apologises when the comb catches on a knot and Deryn only shrugs.

“Pull away,” she says, “It’s only hair.”

“Such pretty hair. And so much of it too.” Leliana works the knot free. “If only you had known you’d need to dive into a lake; then you could have braided it.”

Leliana had taken up the task of untangling Deryn’s hair herself, seeing Deryn struggling to wrangle it back into submission, frustrated to the point of considering hacking it off, the whole waist length tumble of it. She’d taken the comb from Deryn’s hand, set to work tidying and braiding it.

“I should probably cut it,” Deryn says as Leliana finishes, tying off the long braid and twisting it up into a neat knot at the nape of her neck, “But I’m very attached to it, you know.”

Later that night, Alistair toys with her braid, running it through his fingers. He traces the lines of her vallaslin and tucks a daisy behind her ear and murmurs how much he loves her hair. She smiles and twirls the daisy between her fingers and says she loves it too and wonders why she’d ever even thought of cutting it short.

 

* * *

 

The morning after the shrieks, Deryn rises before the sun, before Alistair, before The Dog. She drags the darkspawn away and kicks them and indulges her anger enough to spit on them before turning her back, kicking dirt over them.

Tamlen lies where she left him, rigid with rigor mortis, eyes closed against the sunrise. He stinks of taint and strangeness and mirrors that hide horrors. Tamlen has left his clan and they wouldn’t want him back, even if they said they would, not even to lay him to rest the way he deserves. He is discoloured and disfigured and Deryn hates the darkspawn for what they’ve done to him.

She starts to dig his grave herself, with her own hands because they have no tools, and her fingernails are soon black with dirt, her fingers scraped raw and peeling. All of it welcome, anything to distract herself from the pull beneath her skin, the hollowness in her gut, the scratching song that reminds her that, even dead, she is more like _them_ than her own clan.

She doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn, even when hears the camp stirring. She doesn’t stop when The Dog joins her, pawing at the dirt. She doesn’t stop when Zevran takes Sten into the woods, greatsword slung over the qunari’s broad shoulder. She doesn’t stop when Morrigan stands over her, watching, the earth suddenly so much softer beneath her hands.

She stops when Alistair kneels beside her, gathers her up against his chest, presses his face to her sweat damp hair. It’s then that she cries and there’s dirt on her nails and blood on her hands and tears on her face, wispy curls escaped from her braid.

They bury Tamlen there in that forest clearing, beneath an oak sapling Sten carries out of the woods, and Deryn piles his grave with the flowers of the forest, weaving a garland of wild roses, her apology for his death being so slow and obscene.

 

* * *

 

They take a moment in the Spoilt Princess and Alistair makes Deryn her conscription ale. Mead, with a touch of apples and a scoop of honey, because Deryn likes sweetness and ale makes her gag. They plaster a new label over the old and Deryn decorates it with a vine of flowers, the petals little blotches of ink.

“Warden Mahariel,” Alistair says and it’s sweet in his mouth, the vowels dragged slightly by drink, “Your drink’s too sweet, which means you’re the only one who will ever drink it. Why? Why’d you have it so sweet?”

Deryn takes the bottle from him, presses a kiss next to her name, written in his scratchy handwriting. Her mouth leaves an imprint of rouge behind and she smiles, sweet and tipsy.

“You catch more flies with honey than with darkspawn taint.”

 

* * *

 

Denerim fits her poorly, a glove warped by water and too much sunlight. Deryn pulls her hair back and makes sure her make up is perfect and minces through the streets like she owns them, singing a dripping song about the river. Chantry sisters stare and she wonders if she should change tack, choose something raunchier.

But she doesn’t. She changes song, to something sweet and longing, about weaving garlands set with roses, and slips into the blacksmith’s, drake scales singing in her pack. Denerim fits her poorly and her armour, gleaming silver and blue, so unlike her old leather, isn’t much better.

She sits and watches as Wade works the scales, bending them into form. They gleam in his fingers, reshaped to meet her needs, to match her wants. She has more scales, because she remembers Master Ilen mentioning weapons made of dragonscale, legendary swords and daggers long lost to the ages.

When Wade’s finished, she takes the armour and the few discarded pieces of scale that had cracked. She stops, drops the cracked pieces down a shemlen well, beams at the little child who peers at her through the gate barring the alienage.

“Wish for something,” she says, and the child smiles back, a gap toothed beam undimmed by the sickness that pinches his sallow cheeks.

She catches sight of the guards glare and quickly gathers up the rest of her things, turning her back on the alienage, on her kinfolk, and retreats back to the arl’s estate. She feels the child’s eyes on her back the whole way, drinking in the sight of an elf in gleaming armour, and perhaps wishing that one day, he will wear the same.

That night, she speaks with Anora, asking about the alienage, how Anora plans to make it better in the wake of the Blight, how to make it softer and kinder and safer. Anora considers her in the candlelight, calculating and cool.

“Am I to take this as a sign that you’ll support my claim?” she says, “I can’t do anything, unless I have the crown.”

Deryn grits her teeth and grips the stem of Alistair’s rose, so old and so dried now that it is brittle in her hands. She wonders what it’s like, to have that little concern for someone, to see a whole group of people as a pawn in your game of thrones.

“Yes,” she says, and it’s for the elves and it’s for Alistair, to keep him from becoming so clinical, “But if you don’t keep your promise, I’m not going to make any that it will be easy for you.”

 

* * *

 

Archdemon blood does not wash out easily. Deryn sits still and silent in the bath, the water warm and dark around her, trying to comb the blood from her hair with soapy fingers. Beneath the steam, sweet like roses, she can still smell it all, all the taint and blood and dirt. Her fingers tighten in her hair.

She wants to call for Alistair. She wants to call for Leliana. She wants to call for Tamlen.

But she doesn’t. She gets out of the bath and her hair drips, drips water on the floor, clear now, and she watches it. She watches it drip and, as each drop hits the floor, she imagines music: this one a plucked string; this one a bell chime; this one the tap of a drum.

She wraps herself in borrowed clothes, all of them too big for her, and it’s in the hallway that she bumps into Zevran. He tucks some of her hair behind her ear, still heavy with water, and tells her that he might have to leave.

“I won’t stop you,” she says, “I’ll only ask that you come back, one day. When the world is kinder.”

He laughs, “If we wait for that day, Warden, I might never come back.”

“Well, in that case,” Deryn says, pushing all thoughts of archdemons and blights and Tamlen from her mind, “I might just have to come to you.” Her hand finds the amulet around her neck, palm covering Tamlen’s faint reflection, “Run into trouble, you just whistle. I’ll be there.”

 

* * *

 

Deryn doesn’t tell Ashalle about Tamlen. She doesn’t talk about ghouls and thralls, about shrieks and blight sickness, and how Tamlen had begged, his voice a rasping, scraping thing. Instead, she tells her about Alistair, about his flowers; about Leliana, and the songs she learnt; about Morrigan, and Zevran and The Dog.

She lies with her head in Ashalle’s lap, like she had as a child, and lets Ashalle twist ribbons in her hair. There’s no flowers in Denerim, Ashalle says, none that she can afford; that’s because of the darkspawn. Her hands are gentle and Deryn sighs, breathing in the scent of her skirt, all wood smoke and forests and feeling like home.

“What will you do now?” Ashalle asks, “What do Wardens do when there is no Blight?”

Deryn curls her fingers, presses her cheek to Ashalle’s knee, and thinks of Alistair.

“We stop,” she says, “and we take a moment to breathe.”

 

* * *

 

“I want to go away somewhere.”

Deryn plants herself in Alistair’s lap and his arms encircle her waist, shirt sleeves soft under her hands after a year of armour. They use Anora’s coronation to steal time for themselves, focus shifting from Ferelden’s hero to its queen.

“You don’t like Ferelden anymore?” Alistair says, eyebrow cocked as Deryn traces his jawline, his cheekbones, and the outline of his lips, “It’s not so bad when not ravaged by the Blight, you know.”

“I’ve seen more of it than you have,” Deryn says. Her hand rests against his cheek, “But I need to be somewhere else. I need to go somewhere the Blight has not been. I need to go somewhere I won’t see Tamlen’s footprints.”

Alistair is quiet and he toys with the ends of her hair, left long and loose and flowing, crowned with flowers and ribbons. Deryn’s thumb rubs a line across his cheek and she knows, she _knows_ , that she’s looking at him like he’s the whole world. Alistair looks back at her and there’s that smile, slow and easy on his face.

“Then we’ll find somewhere,” he says, “Somewhere nice. Somewhere green.” He glances down to the floor, where The Dog lies asleep, a mound of muscle and fur, “Somewhere The Dog can come too.”

Deryn leans to press her forehead to his, her nose to his, her lips to his, her fingers pressing into his hair. It’s small and it’s private and it’s perfect and she can’t wait to have even more of it, to grasp it with both hands and use it to build something new.

 

* * *

 

Deryn Mahariel has left her clan. Deryn Mahariel has left her homeland.

Leaving teaches her. It teaches her how to say goodbye. It teaches her what it is to miss something. It teaches her longing and memory and what home had felt like. It teaches her how to move on and grow and to remember that the future is full of promise.

But it also teaches her how to come back. It teaches her to retrace her steps. It teaches her to reflect and see how the past shaped her. It teaches her that things lost can be found again. It teaches her how to say _hello, I’ve missed you._

 Ferelden is green again when she returns, Alistair’s hand in hers. The trees blossom, the grass springs and flowers unfurl in the sunlight. Morning mist melts around them and the air smells sweet, smells of spring, such a turnaround from the sour rotting smell of Blight and desperation. The landscape lives and breathes now as she does. She wanders the mountains and sees Tamlen in every flower but it doesn’t hurt as it did, the ache lessened.

She sinks down into a clump of cornflowers while Alistair occupies himself in the nearby stream, trying to wake himself up properly. She plucks one of the flowers, twirls it between her fingers, presses the blue blossom to her face and looks up into the spread of the spring sky.

“Well,” she says, speaking to the flowers and to the sky and to Tamlen, wherever he may be now, “I’m here.” She watches a songbird cross the sky, breathes in slowly and feels the whole world anew, “I’m back.”


End file.
